Last week DJedi faced off against Worth It on cp_well and during the first round there was an epic double medic takedown of a heavy. With the help of the distraction from grog as demo and his one pipe, theSpawn helps Wilson escape from the enemy base and a target of opportunity presents itself. This was my first attempt at making a video with Sony Vegas and if I had spent more than 2 hours on it I could have done better. Hopefully the next one will be longer too, enjoy the video.

Thanks to sizzle from clan pound for pointing me to this forum post that confirms that the heavy update is just around the corner. To double check I jumped over to the Official Team Fortress 2 Blog and saw that Robin Walker had posted with an updating confirming the new updates. Valve has already created a heavy update page and have revealed the name of the community map that will be included.

CP_Steel, A complex Attack/Defense control point map, with some unique gameplay. Unlike most TF2 maps, capturing a control point modifies the layout of the map, opening and closing routes for each team. As a result, the offensive team has a wide variety of tactical choices around how they’d like to assault the final point.

We have played a match vs KBD and many scrims on cp_steel and after learning some of the intricacies of the map it turned out to be pretty fun.

It looks like the heavy update site has been setup to elude to a new update announced everyday for the next week to ramp up excitement for the release on August 19th. Hope this doesn’t effect our Tuesday match night as much as it did when the pyro updates were released.

The following post stems from a series of e-mails to our internal mailing list. The discussion, started by hein, was so interesting and nostalgic from all the old members coming out of the woodwork, I had to share. I will break the posts up by sender and try to keep them in chronological order. Please keep in mind, we are discussing lethality and not importance to the team. Otherwise the medic would be the hands down winner for TF2.

Please submit your opinions, I’ll be sure to publish all the comments.

heineken
Lets do this on an overall basis.
QWTF:
1st.Soldier – shotgun/double shotgun/rocket launcher/grenade/nail grenade
Reason: Combos – A combo would kill almost any class with a finisher of a single shotgun. Juggling was epic. Could hold down entire rooms by yourself if you had height advantage (val/2f5 rr, ss/cp6, combo on 32s). Locked down.

2nd.Medic – shotgun/double shotgun/super nailgun/gren/conc
Reason: All around – If you ever faced a solid medic you learned to run away unless you were a top soldier. He can get anywhere to any height with a conc jump, heals himself, conc effect is short so dbl’s dont take long. And in a battle he can juggle you around with his super nailgun and instantly switch to dbl barrel if you get to close to finish you off. Check out demos of a guy named ChaosLord, dunno if you’ve heard about him.
Honorable mention.Demoman (piping up hallways and contacting anyone around with great D strength) and Sniper (in the hands of snipers like newby and Chaosfiend, your enemy will duck into the water as fast as possible).

TF2:
1st.Demoman – contacts/stickies/moonshine bottle of justice
Reason: Perimeter Creator – If you need a door locked down, they will not get through it without blowing an uber. Facing demos like grog/stingray/george will make you back up and make you question if you really want to wait to spawn for 20 seconds if you fail at killing them. Hiding stickies is a stealth hold of a door, showing is a deterrent to make them waste ammo and show their cards. His moonshine bottle of justice keeps him surly and mean (true to his irish roots)

2nd.Soldier – shotgun/rocket/shovel
Reason: Rocket splash – He’s no where near as lethal as he was in QWTF, but still with his rockets as they are he does a good deal of damage. No one but the demo has the directed fire and standalone independence to own on his own.
Honorable mention.Scout (you’re only going to kill him if he gets close enough to let you. Watch your medics/demomen/snipers like they are gold or soon they will be dead in short order) and Hwguy (he can move and spin and spray death. If he is quick he can 180 fast enough to kill a spy as the animation is moving up to stab him down. Can also pretty easily go 45-0 on Dustbowl *wink*)

ZillaBunny
I agree with the QWTF ones but the scout is pretty frigging vicious in TF2… or atleast he was the last time I played.

Valpurgius
I think snipers were more powerful then soldiers personally. For example, [CP] ChaosFiend won games on 2fort5r almost single handledly. I know this because when I clan hopped up until DJedi I witnessed it numerous times.

Well6 is another example of wtf I hate myself.

heineken
HAH its funny cause what i had at the top of the post was “Lets not make our choices by one player dominating one map with a class” and then had cf on 2f5, newby on well6. hehe

Valpurgius
I never minded getting owned in the face by CF bullets because I knew he had walls. When newby killed me though I was always like hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…..gay. I would feel the same way when I would walk around a wall and get gren/rock’d in the mouth by sinister, then have him call me a fag (for having walls?).

breathe
yeah i dont think this comparison can be made because there were always maps/players/classes that dominated. and the wallhacking in qwtf was awful too

so here’s my opinion

tf2: scout, demoman, medic
qwtf: sniper, soldier, demoman

SoulFly
I won’t comment on TF2 but here’s my list for qwtf:

Soldier – A good soldier could take on any class 1on1 in close to
mid-range fights and a great one could take on multiple foes and still
come out on top. The only class that is troublesome are snipers from
afar. And we all know that grenades could make a decent soldier good
but we all know the best, like Val/Sling could dominate without them.
With a lot of armor, a lot of firepower, and probably the most
complete set of weapons the soldier had everything it needed to handle
just about any situation.

Sniper – Likewise snipers could dominate anything from ranged but a
good sniper could also handle themselves 1on1 in close range if they
were quick to react. No other class has the power to pin down an
enemy’s offense (or defense on some maps) like the sniper.

Medic – I’m going to agree with Toby on this one. CL was an obvious
example on 32smooth (quad whore) but they also played key defensive
roles on maps like well6 where they could hold down the water pipe
almost by themselves. Medics were also great support classes on
offense being able to heal teammates while making offensive pushes. I
would say the medic is somewhat of a hybrid between the quickness of a
scout with the burst firepower of a soldier in close range (grenade
and super nailgun/dbl shotgun).

Honorable Mention:
Demoman – Generally a defensive class and often the last line of
defense. A great demoman could hold off multiple enemies with the
variety of grenades and could create havoc with grenade spam on
offense (with risk to both friend and foe). I think spam was invented
with the creation of the demoman.

breathe
Yeah it’s true, the problem with evaluating these classes is that if you took the best at each you probably would find someone able to dominate for a long long period of time.

but i think sniper has to win overall for qwtf because they were in shortest supply. plus a dominant sniper was more likely to be an excellent soldier than a dominant soldier was to be an excellent sniper.

Tendril
I think sniper would have to be #1…was always a re-assuring feeling
when you didn’t have to worry about getting sniped because you knew
the other teams sniper had no chance.

Wilson
Sniper was definitely a dominant class in qwtf, no doubt about it, one of the worst matches [WM] ever played was [GT] on canalzon when they posted 4 .K snipers on our base.

On the other hand, [WM] rarely if ever had dominant snipers and we still managed some big wins against clans like GT, M, IC etc. who did

TF2 is more balanced than qwtf was, so its even harder for any one player to make a huge difference. Your whole team has to perform.

ZillaBunny
I remember when UVM played OSKI and they ran 4 snipers on 2fort4, final score was like 9-1 the one coming from when we sent 9 guys (it was a 10 on 10) water

ChaosLord
All great response here. But let me please weigh in on this subject.

If we are talking about which class dominated which map, I am going to have to give this one to……the dogs from 2fort5. Those bastards would give you a disease man, a fucking disease. Think about it.

Spy and Scout were weaker at fragging, but totally vital to playing the game on alot of maps. Sniper was awesome on any map with space. Name one other class that has had 200 frags on one map. One thing I hated near the end of TF was the heavy use of soldier because of BH. A lot of classes became less and less useful aka medic.

breathe
yeah once the bunnyhop started it became really a 5 class game – scout/sniper/soldier/engineer/demoman

spy had already become less effective because there was a legalized program you could run to show the bodies of feigning spies but remove all other dead bodies. i always hated that – it made spy so much less important. i LOVE the tf2 spy.

medics were still impt, but after the bunnyhop became situational – well6 water defense, quad camping 32smooth offense, talk about a change in tf2!!

hwguy was always situational in qwtf, but i love the tf2 hwguy’s effectiveness

pyro threatened to be effective during their prior updates, the class they left us with on their final update was weakened beyond usability.

Chief
you asses are making me miss TF. it’s not fair because it’ll never come back, it’s gone…

Wilson
Havent you heard? It is back. Its called TF2.

Slingshot
Reading about all this “reasoning” behind which tf class was the most dangerous, or useful, or unbalanced makes me want to reiterate an opinion about qwtf that I’ve held for a very long time, which is that the awesomeness of the game was almost entirely ACCIDENTAL.

Flawed game design: half the classes were actually useless or so much less effective than others that to play them was pointless. The other half all changed drastically from their original form through gameplay evolution and “exploiting” aspects of the game that could not possibly have been planned.

Rocket jumping is the classic example, then you add grenade jumping, scout trimping, conc jumping, dispenser detting, the obviously overpowered sniper gave way to maps where offensive sniping was a key strategy, even wall sliding meant you could suddenly fall great heights without making noise or taking damage.

To make the success of the game even more improbable, all of these so-called exploits took skill to cultivate and master. Think how unlikely it is for all of these things to be UNINTENDED and NOT OVERPOWERED. There was a learning curve and innovation did not mean a newbie was suddenly flying and fragging with ease all over the place.

Of course, you know where this is going. Bunny hopping ruined the game because it tipped the skill to power scale. A trimping scout is harder to hit and accesses places he shouldn’t normally be able to get, but you forgive him because you know how hard it is to pull those moves off and it doesn’t give him a totally unreasonable advantage. Bunny hopping was too easy to learn and too powerful to be tolerated by players who had spent years developing multiple skills that were now trumped by a single one.

SoulFly
I’ll agree with you Sling. The game definitely went beyond the
boundaries of what the original creators probably had in mind. At the
same time the community kind of adopted a rule set of what was
acceptable and what wasn’t. Sadly bunnyhopping was something that
destroyed the delicate balance and really reduced the game’s playable
classes to soldiers and snipers (with 1 demoman and 1 engineer on
defense).

Wilson
Unfortunately the ruleset was that anything that isnt a blatant hack is acceptable. I remember that WM decided as a clan bunnyhopping was unacceptable so we didnt do it, which resulted in us losing matches on maps like h4rdcor3 to clans with BH scripts and ultimately deciding to retire.

Difference between bunnyhopping and the other exploits, in my mind, is that is destroys the class balance completely. One of the few handicaps of the soldier class (speed) was completely removed. Why play scout when you can move that fast and have a rocket launcher and twice the health?

breathe
yeah – tf2 eliminates the bh and grens, which i actually like. it makes the balance great.

one of the rules that the community had adopted was no fighting outside, or chasing as everyone loved to complain about. whenever i saw a bunnyhopper i conc’d or shot at them. even as a scout it irked people enough to chase after me and mm1 me. still, come the fuck on, you’re GOING FASTER THAN I AM WITH A ROCKET LAUNCHER, of course i’m gonna do something about it. haha.

lunk
QWTF:
1. Sniper, If you Don’t have one, your team loses
2. Soldier, can hold down the ramp room single handed on D. Soldier, can pull out caps on O with limited support.
3. Medic, Powerful repeating weapon combined with grenades and concs and the ability to heal teammates, made a lethal class.
4. Demo Man, Not as good against all classes, but required for any solid defense in CTF

TF2:
1. Soldier, the best all around destructor. Can kill all other classes equally well
2. HWGuy, no other class causes someone to turn and run as fast as they can
3. Sniper, While not as powerful as the sniper of old, a good one can make an entire team tentative about leaving the base
4. Spy, No one strikes paranoia into a team as much as an effective spy. The psychological warfare is an added bonus when a truly skilled player sits at the controls